■ Politics
More voters on poll roles
There are 16,559,254 eligible voters for Saturday's elec-tions, an increase of 736,671 over the previous legislative elections, the Central Elec-tion Commission said yesterday. Of the total, 16,258,979 voters are eligible to vote for candidates running for regional seats, while 300,275 voters are eligible to vote for candi-dates running for Aboriginal seats. There are 386 candi-dates competing for 168 regional seats and 18 candi-dates running for eight Aboriginal seats. There are also eight overseas Chinese seats and 41 at-large seats
to be filled based on a pro-portional representative system. A total of 13,930 polling stations will be open nationwide, officials said. The constituencies with more than 1 million eligible voters are Taoyuan County (1.26 million), Taichung County (1.06 million) and the first constituency in Taipei City (1.003 million).
■ Election
Military status normal
The military will maintain a normal alert level for Satur-day's legislative elections, military spokesman navy Captain Liu Chih-chien (劉志堅) said yesterday. Speaking at a regular news conference at the Ministry
of National Defense, Liu
said that under the present combat alert system, only a normal alert level is required for legislative elections
day, with only a certain percentage of troops staying in military barracks. With
the consent of the comman-ding officers, Liu said, those troops can also temporarily leave the barracks to cast their ballots. In comparison, Liu said, the presidential election day is subject to a heightened alert. The main difference between the
two levels of alert lies in
the rank of the commanding officers required to stay in the barracks. At the normal alert level, Liu said, a relatively high-ranking commanding officer is required to stay in the barracks. When the military is on heightened alert, he said, all levels of comman-ding officers and the chief political warfare officers must stay.
■ Labor
Higher wage pushed
Some 20 students petitioned the Council of Labor Affairs yesterday for a higher min-imum wage. The students consider the minimum wage of NT$66 per hour too low. According to the students, due to high tuition and living costs, many students take up part-time jobs. But the minimum wage does not cover their basic needs.
The newly adjusted require-ment for work hours, which was passed in 2001, is 84
per fortnight. But the mini-mum wage is still calculated based on the old work hours of 48 per week. The students suggested the new work hour adjustment to be taken into consideration for a
new minimum wage figure. In response, the council said public hearings regarding students' part time jobs would be held.
■ Diplomacy
Malaysian group arriving
A group of young Chinese-Malays left Malaysia yes-terday for Taiwan where they will engage in cultural exchanges. The 340 Malay-sians will visit various places around the country during their 21-day visit. Several Malaysia officials and Tai-wanese representatives spoke at the farewell cere-mony and a special flag was also given to the group. Among the officials who attended the ceremony were Lee Tsung-fen (李宗芬), Lin Wei-teh (林渭德) and Chung Wen-chang (鍾文昌) from the Taipei Economic and Cultural Office in Malaysia, as well as Malaysia's Youth and Sports Vice Minister Ong Tee Keat (翁詩傑).
■ Foreign Aid
Taiwan helping Mongolia
The nation's participation in the implementation of the Mongolia Cooperation Fund signifies that the country has transformed from a donor to an executor of foreign aid, officials of the International Cooperation and Develop-ment Fund said yesterday. Taiwan has cooperated with the European Bank for reconstruction and development in executing the Mongolia Cooperation Fund, which includes providing training to members of small and medium-sized enterprises in Mongolia. Addressing the graduation ceremony for a group of 17 trainees of the program, Minister of Foreign Affairs Mark Chen (陳唐山) said the program will not only benefit the small and medium-sized enterprises in Mongolia but also exhibit Taiwan's devotion to the international community.
■ Politics
Vote-buying action pledged
Prosecutor-General Wu Ying-chao (吳英昭) reassured the public yesterday that any vote-buying activities ahead of Saturday's legislative elections will be rooted out, regardless of candidates' political affiliations. Wu made the remarks during a meeting with two officials from the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT), Tseng Yung-chuan (曾永權) and Hwang Teh-fu (黃德福), who visited the Supreme Prosecutor's Office to urge the nation's highest prosecution authority to be more watchful against vote-buying activities as Satur-day's legislative elections draw near. In response, the prosecutor-general said he las t month instructed all investigation teams around the nation to step up their efforts in the battle against vote-buying. He added that investigators of the anti-vote-buying unit set up for the legislative elections have been dispatched to police stations around the nation.
The Taipei Department of Health yesterday said it has launched a probe into a restaurant at Far Eastern Sogo Xinyi A13 Department Store after a customer died of suspected food poisoning. A preliminary investigation on Sunday found missing employee health status reports and unsanitary kitchen utensils at Polam Kopitiam (寶林茶室) in the department store’s basement food court, the department said. No direct relationship between the food poisoning death and the restaurant was established, as no food from the day of the incident was available for testing and no other customers had reported health complaints, it said, adding that the investigation is ongoing. Later
REVENGE TRAVEL: A surge in ticket prices should ease this year, but inflation would likely keep tickets at a higher price than before the pandemic Scoot is to offer six additional flights between Singapore and Northeast Asia, with all routes transiting Taipei from April 1, as the budget airline continues to resume operations that were paused during the COVID-19 pandemic, a Scoot official said on Thursday. Vice president of sales Lee Yong Sin (李榮新) said at a gathering with reporters in Taipei that the number of flights from Singapore to Japan and South Korea with a stop in Taiwan would increase from 15 to 21 each week. That change means the number of the Singapore-Taiwan-Tokyo flights per week would increase from seven to 12, while Singapore-Taiwan-Seoul
POOR PREPARATION: Cultures can form on food that is out of refrigeration for too long and cooking does not reliably neutralize their toxins, an epidemiologist said Medical professionals yesterday said that suspected food poisoning deaths revolving around a restaurant at Far Eastern Department Store Xinyi A13 Store in Taipei could have been caused by one of several types of bacterium. Ho Mei-shang (何美鄉), an epidemiologist at Academia Sinica’s Institute of Biomedical Sciences, wrote on Facebook that the death of a 39-year-old customer of the restaurant suggests the toxin involved was either “highly potent or present in massive large quantities.” People who ate at the restaurant showed symptoms within hours of consuming the food, suggesting that the poisoning resulted from contamination by a toxin and not infection of the
BAD NEIGHBORS: China took fourth place among countries spreading disinformation, with Hong Kong being used as a hub to spread propaganda, a V-Dem study found Taiwan has been rated as the country most affected by disinformation for the 11th consecutive year in a study by the global research project Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem). The nation continues to be a target of disinformation originating from China, and Hong Kong is increasingly being used as a base from which to disseminate that disinformation, the report said. After Taiwan, Latvia and Palestine ranked second and third respectively, while Nicaragua, North Korea, Venezuela and China, in that order, were the countries that spread the most disinformation, the report said. Each country listed in the report was given a score,